Sunday, September 16, 2007

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences held their annual primetime award show on Sunday night. It is suppose to celebrate the best that American television has to offer, but this night the Fox version used plenty of opportunities to say that TV is crap.

To emphasize the point they used their chronically annoying American Idol buffoon Ryan Seacrest to host it. His main shtick is to exaggerate his metrosexuality and he did it again during the show by going around and telling various actors that he could tell what designers they were wearing by looking at their clothes. In the past he has utilized this kind of coy routine to entice people to wonder if he were gay or not. Maybe he finally realizes that it has been over played so now he has switched gears. Wearing a costume from the Tudor period, he stated "This looked a lot less gay on the rack." He's gone from suggesting he was one of us to using us as the butt of a joke. He just needs someone to smack off that contorted smile he makes when he uses his obnoxious radio voice (which is incessantly always).

There was an okay musical number with Tony Bennett and Christina Aguilera. It didn't seem to be quite polished enough but it was adequate for the event. It seems that there is an inherent mismatch between the two of them. Tony is a low-key and subtle performer while Christina is a powerhouse. She needed to restrain her vocal talents to match his style and to keep him safe. An unchecked expulsion from her diaphragm could have put the 81 year old Tony in the ICU.

This is a good opportunity to compare Christina to that other former Mouseketeer in the news, Britney. Well, Christina can really sing and Britney can lip-sync. That sums it up. Christina can make herself look presentable too, although the backlighting during her performance made her arm hair look like a full moon was starting to take effect (above).

Some other noteworthy hits and misses:

It was tacky to show a shot of TR Knight in the audience immediately after a joke was made that Isaiah Washington would be replacing Michael Richards in a new Seinfeld.

The Amazing Race deservedly continued its amazing run as the only show to ever win the reality competition category.

The inclusion of Charles Nelson Reilly with all the other television people who died in the past year was not enough. There should have been a whole segment on the loss the American culture has suffered from his passing.

I have never seen The Sopranos but I don't want to believe that it should be selected Best Drama instead of Heroes.

Maybe the most interesting part of the night was the minute-thirty commercial for Macy's that had a lot of the people who's famous names grace the products they're pushing. In the commercial Marc Ecko was being a dumbass on the loudspeaker in a Macy's store just like he is being a dumbass for buying the Barry Bonds' baseball. Martha Stewart was prominently displayed as part of the roll-out of her collection at Macy's. Since none of my favorites seemed to have won anything at the Emmys I was glad to at least see Martha succeeding at moving up the retail chain. Hollywood is for America pulling out of Iraq and I am for Martha pulling out of KMart. To misquote Sally Field, "Let's face it, if the gays ruled the world there wouldn't be any g**damn Kmarts!"

From the "oh no they didn't" department. The following is a segment used to list the names of the writers of the Real Time With Bill Maher show.